STATE COMMISSION FINDS SOME ALABAMA DRUG LAWS EXCESSIVE

Alabama prisons are crowded beyond capacity, the 10-to-1 ratio of prisoners
to guards is the highest in the nation, and the Department of Corrections
says it needs costly new facilities just to keep up with "demand."

And yet, the Alabama Sentencing Commission created by the Legislature in
2000 recently reported that the state spends about $4 million a year
incarcerating hundreds of marijuana users a year who would probably not do
time in many other states.

The judges, prosecutors and state officials on the commission conclude that
Alabama's drug laws are Draconian, ineffective and need fixing. But just
how the marijuana laws could be repaired remains a vexing problems for the
commission, which could not agree on recommendations that the public and
lawmakers might find acceptable.

The problem starts with the felony charge that a second bust for pot
carries. A person's first arrest and conviction for personal use of
marijuana is treated as a misdemeanor, but the second conviction--no matter
for how small a quantity--is treated as a felony.

Compare that to states like Virginia, where marijuana possession is always
treated as a misdemeanor unless someone is caught selling it. Or Nebraska,
where a person can be arrested for pot possession seven times before it
becomes a felony. "I can't remember anybody going to jail for pot
[possession] in the last 15 years," Richard Trodden, Commonwealth Attorney
for Arlington County, Va., told the Birmingham News last week.

Yet in Alabama, about 1,000 people are convicted of felony marijuana
possession annually, with 40 percent them of plunged into the state's
bursting-at-the-seams prison system.

The state sentencing commission reported that not only do Alabama's
marijuana laws put a burden the system, but they also appear not to have
much of a deterrent effect, if the repeat offender rate is any indication.

But proposals for smarter, more compassionate penalties considered at
sentencing commissions have met with some resistance, beginning with local
district attorneys. A proposal that felony charges be brought only for
possession of a pound or more of marijuana was rebuked by Montgomery County
District Attorney Ellen Brooks, who represents DAs on the commission.

"I think going around saying you've got a pound of marijuana and it's a
misdemeanor is not going to sell well in Alabama," she said.

Assistant Attorney General Rosa Davis, who represents the AGs office on the
sentencing commission, agreed that convincing state legislators to impose a
quantity criteria for felony pot charges would be tough. But, she said, the
national trend is clearly in that direction.

"I have a feeling that [the lawmakers] are going to look at this and laugh
in my face," Davis said of the proposal to let possession of less than a
pound of marijuana be treated as a misdemeanor. "But if you look at what's
happening around the county, the marijuana sentences are coming down, down,
down."

Meanwhile, Alabama's incarceration rate is fifth in the nation, with 612
inmates per 100,000 in population behind bars. And 15 percent of those are
locks up for drug crimes.

"I'm in favor of making marijuana possession one time or 10 times a
misdemeanor," says Ninth Circuit Judge David Rains, a commission member who
has 23 years of experience on the bench in northeast Alabama. "Sending
people to prison is not solving the drug problem. It's just creating an
enormous financial burden on the state."

But with conflicting opinions on the commission, not to mention resistance
in the Legislature and from the public at large, change does not appear to
be in sight for Alabama drug laws.

But at least the process of considering alternatives has begun.